Dandelions finally get their day in the sun

After decades of digging up, poisoning, burning and cursing the dandelion, Canada is slowly giving up its struggle against the ubiquitous weeds.

The latest sign the much-maligned yellow flower is regaining respect: Calgarians can now let their front-yard dandelions flourish without fear of getting ticketed.

As long as the flowers are shorter than 15 cms, Calgarians will escape “enforcement action,” a change made in light of Alberta’s recent removal of dandelions from its official weed hit-list.

“Dandelions are just not considered serious enough to have a legislative focus,” says Simon Wilkins, Calgary’s pest-management co-ordinator.

A welcome salad ingredient for early settlers, by the latter half of the 20th century the prolific flower had become a bright yellow beacon signalling neighbourhood neglect and urban decay. But after years of fruitless battle, things are changing.

“No matter how much we spray, we will never defeat the dandelion,” Caspar Pfenninger, a fan of the flower, wrote in a letter sent to the Calgary Herald.

In Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the flower is still classified as a “noxious weed.” But much of Canada has relented, and in the last few years, thousands of once-green Canadian acres have become blanketed with dandelions.

Toronto’s un-sprayed highway medians are coated with the yellow flowers every spring thanks to a province-wide cosmetic pesticide ban.

The same ban exists in Nova Scotia, where dandelion enthusiasts hosted the Halifax Dandelion Festival in 2010.

“Frustration accumulated over the years at the negative attitude people have developed towards dandelions,” wrote festival organizer Pat Brennan-Alpert at the time.

British Columbia has gone so far as to list dandelions as an “agricultural commodity.”

“There’s no toxicity, there’s no impact on people, pets or ecology and the plants are edible,” says Zella Johnson, store supervisor at GardenWorks, a Victoria, B.C., garden centre. “People just don’t like the look of them.” Plenty of lawns are overrun with non-grass species such as moss or clover, but bright yellow dandelions are simply the most noticeable, says Ms. Johnson.

Toronto gardener Sarah Battersby says she used to spend hours every weekend yanking dandelions out of her lawn. Starting three years ago, she became a dandelion convert. “What they offer as positives far outweighs the negatives,” she says. The flowers have a deep taproot, which allows them to suck low-lying nutrients to the surface. Since the flowers are one of the first to bloom, they are the first to attract pollinators, who then tend to stick around for the rest of the season. “Dandelions lead to a healthier lawn,” she says.

Alberta’s dandelion amnesty is not sitting well with yard-conscious Calgarians. “First, they will come for public lands, and then they will come for our private yards,” wrote former Calgary alderman Ric McIver in a letter to Postmedia. “This is not what I want for my grandchildren to be left to play on.”

“How many dandelion salads or glasses of dandelion wine have all our anti-spraying aldermen consumed? It is not a harmless weed!” wrote another man.

North America’s first European farmers would have seen the dandelion as free food rather than a nuisance, says Vermont winemaker Philip Tonks. “You went through a whole winter without any greens, so those first dandelion leaves were cherished,” he says. For more than 10 years, Mr. Tonks’ Grandview Winery has produced a dandelion wine. One hour of foraging will get you enough dandelions to make a gallon of wine, says Mr. Tonks.

“I don’t know why people want to remove them, they’ve been very good to me; they keep me healthy and they’ve made me world famous,” says “Wildman” Steve Brill, an American foraging author who says he eats at least a few cups of dandelion flowers and leaves a week. In 1986, Mr. Brill was arrested for foraging dandelion greens from New York’s Central Park. Earlier this month, Mr. Brill released “Wild Edibles,” an iPod app to help users identify edible plants — including dandelions. ”If you pick it at the wrong time of year, it’s bitter,” he says.

The flowers may even have industrial and health applications. In 2010, researchers at the University of Windsor announced that extracts from the dandelion root could be used to kill skin cancer cells. This week, the Ford Motor Company announced it would be using crushed dandelion roots to make synthetic rubber for auto parts.

Useful or not, dandelions are unwelcome, says Jim Spencer, owner of Spencer’s Garden Centre in rural Nova Scotia. “If the plant you desire is grass and you get dandelions — that’s a weed,” says Mr. Spencer. Earlier in the day, he had fielded a call from a Nova Scotian who had spent $5,000 laying sod on his front lawn, only to find it quickly consumed by airborne dandelion seed.

“Dandelions do not increase the value of a house … they’ll just take over the grass and there’ll be no grass left,” says Mr. Spencer. “The person who says that dandelions are OK probably lives in an apartment.”

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